Release Date: December 23, 2025

Author: BlockBeats Editorial Team

Over the past 24 hours, the cryptocurrency market has demonstrated strong momentum across multiple dimensions. Mainstream discussions have focused on Coinbase’s formal entry into the prediction market through the acquisition of The Clearing Company, as well as the intense debate within the AAVE community regarding token incentives and governance rights.

In terms of ecosystem development, Solana launched the innovative Kora fee layer aimed at reducing user transaction costs; meanwhile, competition in the Perp DEX space has intensified, with the showdown between Hyperliquid and Lighter sparking widespread community discussion on the future of decentralized derivatives.

I. Mainstream Topics

1. Coinbase Acquires The Clearing Company, Formally Enters Prediction Market

This week, Coinbase announced the acquisition of The Clearing Company, another significant move to deepen its presence in this field following last week’s announcement that it would launch prediction markets on its platform.

The founder of The Clearing Company, Toni Gemayel, and his team will join Coinbase to jointly drive the development of the prediction market business.

Coinbase Product Lead Shan Aggarwal stated that the growth of prediction markets is still in its early stages and predicted that 2026 will be a breakout year for the sector.

The community responded positively, generally believing that Coinbase’s entry will bring significant traffic and compliance advantages to the prediction market. However, this has also sparked discussions about the competitive landscape of the industry.

Rivalry founder Jai Bhavnani commented that for startups, if their product model proves successful, industry giants like Coinbase have ample reason to replicate it.

This serves as a reminder to all entrepreneurs in the crypto space that they must build sufficiently deep moats to withstand competitive pressure from giants.

2. Kalshi Launches Kalshi Research and Integrates BSC Network

The regulated prediction market platform Kalshi launched its research division, Kalshi Research, this week, aiming to open its internal data to academia and researchers to promote exploration of topics related to prediction markets.

Its first published research report indicated that Kalshi’s performance in predicting inflation has surpassed traditional Wall Street models. Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara stated that the power of prediction markets lies in the valuable data they generate, and it is time to better utilize this data.

Simultaneously, Kalshi announced support for BNB Chain (BSC), allowing users to deposit and withdraw BNB and USDT via the BSC network.

This move is seen as a significant step for Kalshi to open its platform to a broader crypto user base, aiming to unlock access to the world’s largest prediction market. Additionally, Kalshi revealed plans to host its first prediction market conference in 2026 to further promote industry exchange and development.

3. AAVE Token Incentive Controversy Continues, Founder and Whales Accumulate Amid Market Downturn

The AAVE community recently engaged in intense debate over an ARFC proposal titled “$AAVE Token Alignment, Phase 1 – Ownership Governance.” The proposal aims to transfer ownership and control of the Aave brand from Aave Labs to Aave DAO.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov publicly stated he would vote against the proposal, arguing that it oversimplifies complex legal and operational structures and could slow down the development of core products like Aave V4.

The community’s reaction has been polarized. Some criticized Stani for applying a “double standard” in governance and questioned whether his team has misappropriated protocol revenue; others supported his cautious stance, believing that major governance changes require more thorough discussion.

This controversy highlights the tension between the ideal of DAO governance in DeFi projects and the actual power of core development teams.

Despite the governance controversy putting pressure on the AAVE token price, on-chain data shows that Stani Kulechov himself spent millions of dollars to purchase large amounts of AAVE in the past few hours.

Meanwhile, the whale with address 0xDDC4, after lying dormant for 6 months, spent 500 ETH (approximately $1.53 million) to purchase 9,629 AAVE tokens. Data indicates that this whale has accumulated nearly 40,000 AAVE tokens over the past year but remains in an unrealized loss position.

The accumulation actions by the founder and whales during market volatility have been interpreted by some investors as a signal of confidence in AAVE’s long-term value.

4. Popular Articles: DeFi Curators and Ethereum Year-End Summary

Among this week’s popular articles, Morpho Labs’ “Curator Explained” detailed the role of “curators” in DeFi.

The article compares curators to asset managers in traditional finance; they design, deploy, and manage on-chain vaults, providing users with one-click diversified investment portfolios.

Unlike traditional fund managers, DeFi curators execute strategies automatically through non-custodial smart contracts, with users always retaining full control over their assets. This article offers a new perspective on understanding the specialization and risk management in the DeFi space.

Another widely circulated article, “Ethereum 2025: From Experiment to World Infrastructure,” provided a comprehensive summary of Ethereum’s development over the past year. The article states that 2025 was a pivotal year for Ethereum’s transition from an experimental project to a global financial infrastructure. Through the Pectra and Fusaka hard forks, Ethereum achieved account abstraction and significantly reduced transaction costs.

Simultaneously, the SEC’s clarification of Ethereum’s “non-security” status, along with traditional financial giants like JPMorgan launching tokenized funds on the Ethereum mainnet, signifies Ethereum’s growing recognition by mainstream institutions. The article argues that whether it’s the continued growth of DeFi, the prosperity of the L2 ecosystem, or integration with the AI field, all indicate that Ethereum’s vision as a “world computer” is gradually becoming a reality.

II. Mainstream Ecosystem Developments

1. Solana: Launches Kora Fee Layer and propAMM Data Research

The Solana Foundation engineering team launched a fee layer solution called Kora this week.

Kora is a fee relay and signing node designed to provide more flexible transaction fee payment methods for the Solana ecosystem. Through Kora, users will be able to conduct gasless transactions or choose to pay network fees using any stablecoin or SPL token. This innovation is seen as a significant step in lowering the entry barrier for new users and enhancing the usability of the Solana network.

Additionally, an in-depth research report on propAMM (proactive market maker) has garnered community attention. The report, based on data analysis of propAMMs like HumidiFi on Solana, indicates that Solana has reached or even surpassed the level of traditional finance (TradFi) markets in terms of trade execution quality.

For example, on the SOL-USDC trading pair, HumidiFi can provide highly competitive spreads (0.4-1.6 bps) for large trades, which already outperform the slippage of certain mid-cap stocks in traditional markets.

The research suggests that propAMM is making the vision of an “internet capital market” a reality, and Solana is becoming the optimal venue for this to happen.

2. Perp DEX: Hyperliquid and Lighter Competition Escalates

Competition in the perpetual contract DEX (Perp DEX) space is heating up.

In its latest official article, Hyperliquid listed the emerging competitor Lighter alongside centralized exchanges like Binance, referring to them as platforms employing centralized sequencers. Hyperliquid used this to emphasize its own transparency advantages of being “fully on-chain, operated by a validator network, with no hidden state.”

The community widely interpreted this as Hyperliquid’s “declaration of war” against Lighter. The technical path differences between the two platforms have also become a focal point of discussion: Hyperliquid emphasizes extreme on-chain transparency, while Lighter focuses on providing “verifiable execution” through zero-knowledge proofs, offering users a trading experience similar to CLOB (Central Limit Order Book).

This debate over the future direction of decentralized derivatives exchanges is expected to peak in 2026.

Meanwhile, discussions about Lighter’s trading fees have surfaced. Some users pointed out that Lighter charged as high as 81 basis points (0.81%) for a $2 million USD/JPY forex trade, far exceeding the near-zero spreads offered by traditional forex brokers.

In response, some views explained that Lighter does not adopt the B-book model of betting against market makers; its prices are anchored to TradFi markets, and the high fees may be related to current liquidity or incentives for market makers to balance skew. How to provide more competitive spreads for real-world assets (RWA) in the highly volatile crypto market has become a key issue Lighter needs to address in the future.